


Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes

by reflektor



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reflektor/pseuds/reflektor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Jim Moriarty is on the side of the angels and Sherlock Holmes is a criminal mastermind.<br/>A study in characterization.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> credit goes to  
> \- ACD for writing beautiful stories  
> \- the writers of Sherlock for hurting my heart  
> \- tumblr user forgivingthefall for being a cool cat and beta-ing my work

“We’ll start with the riding crop.” James Moriarty’s face held the barest hint of a smile, and then it was gone. Molly wondered if she’d even seen it at all.

The leather felt smooth and clean in his fingertips, and with each crisp _crack_ of the handle, the corpse responded perfectly with blood and discoloration. Cause and effect. The grotesque complexity of the human body contrasted with the mundane simplicity of a stimulus- it was exhilarating.

“Anything?” Molly was used to corpses. The cartographer of the dead, every layer mapped. Skin, blood, sinew, bone. Her oceans. Still, it made her shiver whenever she saw the look of almost reverence on Moriarty’s face when he approached a still body, a still heart. She had been in the room with him once, when he had pressed his hand against that of a long dead Howard Jetzen and whispered, _“We’re just alike, you and me. We’re the_ same _.”_

“Bodies,” Jim said now, lips parted in childlike wonder. “Traitors of the mind.” It was completely indecent, Molly Hooper decided. But then, Jim Moriarty glowed with indecency. Even under a polished suit and smooth, slick hair, a terrifying rawness weaved in and out of his features. He lived in- _thrived_ in- indecency. It was almost erotic.

His voice was lilting, elegant, dark. “Tell me what bruises form in the next twenty minutes.” He waved his phone. A dismissal, then.

Jim cast a last glance at Molly before he left. The shiver he noticed. The lipstick, the perfume; these, he filed away with a smugness. Future reference. She looked like she was about to say something, interrupted only by the smooth sound of footsteps out the door.

The last thing Molly Hooper heard before he walked out was the cold blade of his laugh against her throat.

…

“Bit different from my day.” The man’s eyes were weathered, his stance firm. But nothing was disguised in his demeanor, no secrets were held in the way he walked, talked, dressed, moved. Details about his life came in bright pink flashes inside Jim’s brain.

New flatmate. More than that, too, much more, but Jim tucked away the rest of it. Found a fleshy corner inside himself, kept everything there.

John Watson introduced himself; Jim considered him.

Soldier. Doctor. Loyal to a fault. Defensively heteronormative, implying a sense of self doubt and insecurity. Stubborn. Kind. All these things screamed _boring_ at him- but… But. There was always something.

It was his hand. Steady, dead steady, in battle, but now it was trembling under a closed fist.

Adrenaline junkie. Loved the war, the game, the chase. To brave the boundaries of morality, tiptoe the fine line between human and… and whatever came after that. It was all the same to John Hamish Watson. Interesting.

Jim smiled at the man with an alluring intimacy that made John look away hastily. It took a few seconds before the man caught himself, quickly rearranged his bewilderment into a frown and a scowl. Oh, this was going to be fun.

Jim stood up from his microscope and walked towards him. His movements were arachnidian in that they were almost dancelike and strangely threatening. A spider closing in on a fly, confident in its outcome.

“John.” Make it breathy on the vowels, linger on the tail end. Illicit a reaction. _Good._ “Have you ever heard a Stravinsky piece? Not my favorite… composer, of course-” and he thumbed the fabric of John’s shirtsleeve as he spoke, in a way that was both territorial and terrifying- “but, I must admit, he did have a certain... charm. He was a sheep,” and now he was breathing down John’s neck, “you see. Too influenced and too structured for my liking. But you might. I’ll show you sometime.” Leave now, keep him hanging. “If you’re good.” Everything was calculated.

John opened and closed his mouth three times before speaking. His voice was even. He _was_ good. “Sometime.” He paused, “Who are you?”

“Your new flatmate.” A smile now, disarmingly genuine. Or seemingly so. He had so many, it was hard to tell. “Jim Moriarty. Hi.” Into a lazy drawl, now. Sexier.

He gave the address and the time, a cool nod to Mike Stamford.

He needed a send-off before he went out the door. Something memorable. A wink? Too humanizing. Besides, John Watson craved a more lingering thrill.

A kiss, then.

It was hot and sharp. Left a stinging sensation on John’s lips and a protest in his mouth. “Listen- mate... I-I’m not actually g-” The door swiveled in his face.

Jim Moriarty was smiling. His performance was perfect.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet our antagonist and visit with the man behind the mask. Is it a bluff? Or a double bluff?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will kiss passionately anyone who gives feedback. Or stand at a safe distance if you prefer.

There was a strange man sitting across from John Watson on the tube. He wasn't usually unnerved by such things- the London Underground attracted all sorts- but he couldn't help but squirm under the man's heated stare.  
He reminded John of a skeleton.  
A thin layer of skin stretched tightly across his garish face, which might have been quite handsome, thought John, if it wasn't for the cold smile that dominated those two hollow cheekbones. His lips were thin and his limbs were thin and his body was absolutely still, save for the eyes, which darted across to each passenger, calculated and analytical. So pale, too, an alien sort of paleness that looked rather odd contrasted with the dark mop of hair that grew in wild curls on his head, like a mad scientist in a film.  
His bony fingers pressed together in a gesture almost like a prayer, and his legs were sprawled out in front of him. John could imagine him seated on an oversized armchair and staring into an open flame.  
The thing about most of the- well, the _odd_ ones- that John had encountered on the tube, was the remarkable similarity in their frantic wildness and violent gestures that drew them rather strikingly apart from the rest. But this man knew how to assimilate, how to wait, when to strike. And so he was smiling.  
Twenty minutes after John Watson left the passenger car, it was filled with a toxic gas that killed twenty people. The police would later arrive and label it an act of terrorism.  
The man called Holmes watched it all from a safe distance outside. His toothless grin stretched to a breaking point and he turned his coat up against the unbearable brightness of sun.  
…  
They caught each other just as both were arriving. Shook hands, a strange formality given the chaste kiss of the previous night. Moriarty- _Jim, please,_ he insisted- opened the door and held it out to John in a manner that struck him as both chivalrous and condescending. A “thank you” and a pointed glare followed, which made Jim chuckle. Somehow he knew it would.  
The interior of the place was quite nice, modestly yet comfortably furnished. It looked almost homey, and John smiled at the thought that this odd, elegant man would choose here of all places. Maybe he was human after all.  
“The subtleties of disguise, John Watson,” Jim murmured close to his ear, and John jumped to see that he was less than a meter behind him, “are only as deep as those willing to look.” And so John looked closer, saw how the painting on the wall was carefully askew and how the threads on the armchair were shredded with the knife sitting on the table across.  
“Ah.”  
“What do you think?” John noticed that whenever Jim spoke, he circled around his victim like a moon that had fallen out of orbit.  
He smiled tightly, nervous. This man made him nervous. His speech, his dark stare, his physicality. This _place_ made him nervous, its attention to detail. He opened his mouth to say _no, this is too much_ , but- “It’s nice.” And it was.  
Jim Moriarty smiled a smile that knew it had won. And he had.  
…  
A record player hummed softly in the middle of the night as he waltzed alone. Arm up, shoulders back, feet leading an invisible man at his front.  
John watched it all from behind him, had woken suddenly from a bad dream.

_He was in the old target practice room. A blank-faced man in a silky black suit steadied John’s shaking hand and the rifle behind it. Positioned his shoulders for him, gave the nod to shoot. As was procedure. The target was shaped like a torso. He pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times. And then he couldn’t stop. John Watson sobbed with every release._   
_Somewhere in between the tenth and fifteenth shot, the target had turned into a bleeding corpse with white, glassy eyes and a watery smile. John pulled the gun back in shock, and then the blank-faced man started to scream. It was the yowl of a cat and the tremor of the earth. It was a low buzz and a high shriek. It was a swarm of heavy sounds filling Johns ears and eyes and mouth, until John Watson was drowning inside of himself._

It was the same every night.  
Their first full day sharing a flat together, and Jim had been gone almost all day. “Working,” he said evasively, when John asked. But here he was at last, dancing alone in the middle of the room.  
“Join me?”  
John looked up to find that while the music was still playing, Jim had stopped and was looking at him with a tired smile. This human glimpse into his unguarded character relaxed John. He acted with the superiority of a king and the coldness of his assassin, but at the end of the day, he was just as small as the common soldier. John smiled back, and the glance they shared was almost sweet.  
“I was never much of a dancer,” John said, but melted a little under Jim’s softness. “Just don’t laugh.”  
But they did laugh, as they tripped and stumbled to the poetry of the music. The melody swelled, and Jim’s moves grew wider, and their laughter faded into soft chuckles as John started noticing his own feet, then into quiet.  
They were two dramatically different people, thought John. But right now, they were both a little bit alone and they were both a little bit sad and they were both so _fucking_ tired. And step.  
If it weren’t for the fact that John woke up on the couch, feet curled against those of his flatmate, he would have wondered if it was all just a dream.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonding, but not the sexy kind with ropes. Patience.

“Tell me about the war.”

They shared a bed together after that, simply because they could. Those silent midnight waltzes became more and more frequent; It seemed to the two of them to be necessity rather than anything else, dancing their way through the slowness of time. “Practicality,” Jim insisted on the subject of their sleeping arrangements, and John had never heard him use that word in his life. But drowsily he found himself agreeing, and together they climbed into bed.

And life was so tepid and shallow and simple. John thought that if he ever let go of this insane, perfect man, he might break.

He never told Jim this. But he knew, oh he knew. Sometimes he smiled towards John’s sideways glances and prolonged stares, a smile of assertion rather than of affection. Other times, he turned away. He was unconventionally intimate and unpredictably distant, and John thought that he even liked the smooth set of his jawline and the hardness of his shoulders on those days when he wouldn’t say a word.

He looked forward to the nights when they would dance together, hand in hand.

And then there were days like this.

_Tell me about the war._

Today he was warm, his posture open and inviting. It was not often that the corners of his eyes crinkled, but today his mouth turned upward in such a way that caused wrinkles and folds to ripple along the sharp corners of his face, softening them in effect. His body was soft, too, soft and warm. Jim tried so hard to harden himself against the world that John never noticed. The crispness of a suit and sharpness of a scowl were weapons that he used to become larger than himself, but today he wore a cotton shirt and jeans and a hazy smile. He did have such a nice smile.

John was apprehensive. Everything he had seen of Jim’s speech and his actions seemed to be crafted for something bigger. John didn’t know what that something was- maybe it was another method of intimidation- but he learned to be careful around the things that he said.

“I couldn’t describe the war to you. Even if I tried.”  
Jim shook his head. “I don’t think that’s true,” he said quietly. “We’ve all been through war.”

John smiled. For a moment the two were quiet. Jim was waiting, he supposed, but not impatiently. Just waiting. “Do you ever hate just being here? In this city, in this flat. I hate it.” He took a breath. “I see people running back and forth, and... to go where? Shopping. To file paperwork. And I remember running, myself. I was being shot at. My friends…” He trailed off. “I’m living in a city where everybody minds their own business and runs and runs away from this creeping slowness of living. And it always catches up to them. It caught up to me.” He looked at Jim, expecting boredom, impatientness.

Jim stared at him, eyes burning and lips slightly parted. His expression was not one of menace, but rather of something more raw. Catching himself, he changed it quickly. “I… know the feeling.”

“I studied medicine. Science, too. I learned that we’re surrounded by worlds of ice and globes of fire, and we’re made up of these tiny little universes of particles and atoms. And here I am in this ventilated box.”

He paused again but didn’t look up. “You want a war story? My friend died. He was shot at. That could be the end of a story, and I’ve told people it that way. Usually they offer their sympathies and leave.” He laughed coldly, an echo of another laugh he recognized but couldn’t place. Jim’s posture stiffened, and John fixed his eyes on the ground.

“The man who shot him was an American soldier. It’s a funny thing, I wasn’t angry. Life is precious, but everybody dies in war. If you don’t, you’re not doing something right.

"I guess there’s something that happens in a warzone where the colors of the uniforms start to blur together. Right and wrong- and were we ever in the right in the first place? Anyway, it starts to seem like the goal is just to hit as many targets as possible. That’s all they are in the end. So he was shot, it didn’t really matter by who. And that’s the story, it doesn’t really have a beginning or an end. Nothing ever did at the time.

“But I miss it, you know? The endless climax, the rush. I hate it but I miss it, and that’s war, I guess.”

They were silent again, and Jim was careful enough not to drop his flat expression. Still, those burning eyes felt the same against his own, and John thought he had might have earned some sort of respect.

“You don’t have to.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Miss it.” John looked at him curiously. “You could come with me. I’ve never offered it before, I’m… sorry." His breath caught in his throat. "I usually work alone.”

…

And so. The silhouette of the short man and the stiff one was striking against the orange of the rising sun. As the two crossed the bridge to investigate the mysterious deaths on the tube, another body could be spotted looking out over them. He was tall and his cheekbones were sharp.

Time to dance.

…

They began to develop a routine. Every day went something like this:

Jim Moriarty woke up with the sun. Slicked his hair back, left the gel on the bathroom counter. He was a mess, but his hair was immaculate. Then he would pick a suit; He always leaned towards blue or black. (He looked good in both.) He would take his options in the palm of his hands, stroke the seams, the sleeves, the groin. Inhale deeply. Taste the fibers against his open mouth. If John was awake to watch this ritual, he would shiver. It drew him in, this transformation from man to insect, all beady eyed and shining.

The he would choose a tie,shine his shoes, go downstairs to make breakfast. He _cooked._ Jim Moriarty. Cooked. Just when John thought he had him all figured out.

John usually woke later, hair matted in tangles at the top of his head. He came down the stairs, yawning and grumbling. Jim tried not to smile, an expression that John found foreign, but so, so enticing.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"... Jim, I swear to God-"

"You are absolutely endearing to me, John Watson."

John turned red. "Eat your damn breakfast."

And then they would go out. Sometimes they caught murderers, sometimes thieves, sometimes nothing. It was new to John in some ways, but then again it wasn't, really. He recognized that surge of adrenaline.

Right now they were working on something in the flat, something that John found boring. They had lined up all of the victims photographs, but they weren't getting anywhere. It seemed like an act of terrorism, nothing left behind, but Jim insisted otherwise. "This gas isn't foreign." John hazily agreed. He just wanted to sleep.

The doorbell rang. The landlady, Mrs. Hudson, called them from downstairs. "James! It's for you, darling."

When the two reached the door, Jim's face hardened. It wasn't apathy or rage, just a cold echo of foreboding.

"Nice to see you, too. My dear." All John could see in the darkened street was a flicker of a sneer on the man's face.

Then the light changed as he walked into the room, and John caught other details. A pinstripe suit. An umbrella. "And you can call me Mr. Holmes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are heckin awesome xoxo


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We briefly meet the eldest of the Holmes brothers.

Imagine:

John Watson had never seen his flatmate scared, or even alarmed, in his life. (Admittedly, their life together had been rather short, but their experiences were surprisingly many.) His dead, wandering eyes and half-asleep smile became the familiarities from which John gauged his state of being, and never did he seem anything but collected. Jim's shield was an alien haziness, a strange unfamiliarity which fostered fear and foreboding. It was ineffable: Even the most battle-hardened criminals shrunk against his wandering, smirking, lilting deadness. And Jim never flinched.

Maybe it was this that drew John to him. He was still trying to figure their relationship out, and failing. But there was something about that curious, catlike interest Jim emanated that gave John a strange and powerful ache. It was as if Jim clawed his way up to the face of danger and asked it to rub him behind the ears as he purred.

With all this in mind, notice: In the face of this smiling stranger, Jim looked terrified beyond belief.

The two suited men were both seated in comfortable chairs while John tended to the fire. The thick and glassy silence was shattered as he swore loudly, hand caressed by flame. " _Fuck_. Jesus fuck."

"Thank you, John," spoke the Holmes man. Out of the two, he was the first to speak in the past ten minutes. "We're perfectly comfortable, if you could just leave us."

John looked at his friend and partner. Two words he had never directly acknowledged, but he felt them-he _felt_ them- deep beneath his gut.

Jim wasn't stupid enough to knowingly externalize his fear, so it was the little things. A tiny, visible tremor throughout his body, and, more tellingly, he was alert and unsmiling. Jim nodded.

So John left. He had no choice. He leaned an ear against the door, but the men spoke in quiet murmurs that John could not decipher. They both spoke in turn as well, with no interruptions on either end. Move following countermove. Etiquette masking savagery.

John was seized by an overwhelming protectiveness, giving him the urge to _do_ something. His militaristic instincts told him break down the door and shoot the man who had introduced fear to the fearless. This was equally matched, however, by his own fear of betraying the trust of a man who had fit so perfectly into his own imperfect life.

And yeah, he was scared of the other guy, too.

With nothing to do, John paced. _Stupid. Selfish._ In between beats of frustration, John imagined scenarios in which he would open the door to find Jim dead on the floor. Tears, hot and panicky, fell onto his cheeks. Jim, having choked on his own vomit. Jim, stabbed through the heart with a shard of glass.

Jim, dead but still laughing.

When the door opened, John hastily wiped his eyes with his sleeves. Jim glanced at him quickly, eyes distant and unreadable.

The man picked up his umbrella from the coat rack. "No need to fret, Mr. Watson. We were just having a little chit-chat." He swung the umbrella and coat over one shoulder like a cartoonishly portrayed villain and approached Jim until their faces were only inches apart. "You know," he muttered quietly, and John suddenly felt like he was witnessing a deeply private moment, "I think we ought to spend more time together, you and I. Like the old days."

Jim's expression- it was almost as if he was consciously distracting himself from the present moment- morphed only for a second into one of white hot rage until settling back into its usual cloudiness. "Don't worry, darling," he said. John felt a surge of relief at hearing his voice again, although instead of its usual darkly musical quality, it was completely steady. "I was planning on giving your family a visit anyways. No doubt I'll see you there."

The other man smiled a polite, toothless smile. "How _exciting._ If I recall your last, er, _family visit_ correctly, it should be quite the spectacle." He opened the front door and stepped out. Stopped. "I know dear Sherlock will be just thrilled."

Upon hearing the name, Jim stiffened. "Likewise." But his words went unheard- the door was shut. The man was gone.

...

Normally, this was when John would beg for details. Jim solved problems quickly and fearlessly, without explanation, while John tried to catch up. Today felt a little different.

"You... deserve to know what that was," he said at breakfast. The two had climbed in bed together the previous night without speaking, neither asking questions or offering up any answers. Jim fell asleep clinging to John, his faced buried in John's shoulder. John did not sleep, but stayed up feeling his friend's warmth against him and sensing his pain like a punch to the gut.

John didn't think he did deserve to know. He looked at the man in front of him, hard jaw covered in stubble and still in his pajamas. He looked solid, or at least less ghostlike. Even more unsettling was the completely grounded expression on his face, something John had never seen.

John had always been the slow one, but it was only yesterday that he had really acknowledged it. Seeing two people playing off each other's intellect like masters of chess completely threw him in a way that no case had. Their interaction was terrifying, yet it held a sense of mutual respect that John knew he could never compete with. He felt small in comparison. So he said nothing.

Jim looked at him, and his expression softened. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "The last thing I will ever do," he said quietly, gaze on the table in front of him, "is admit to any sort of sentiment. Believe me, John Watson, you mean more to me than you will ever know. So when I tell you that you deserve to share the things I know, and when I trust in you to bear the same burden as I... consider it my highest expression of affection. What you- what you do for me, is more profound than any display of cleverness will ever match."

There was a moment of silence. John didn't know what to say, but his heart started pounding. He wanted to leap across the table and hold this man to his chest, kiss him, but he didn't think that would remedy the powerful boiling sensation in his veins. "Okay," he said instead. "So tell me."

Jim looked at him and smiled slightly. Slowly, he started to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry sorry i haven't updated in a while, hopefully with the start of summer i can write more. a chapter a week is my goal, so please leave comments if you are so inclined!! i find them very motivational <3


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